Publications by authors named "Zhengqi Lu"

Background: Monocyte-derived macrophages and microglia initially adopt an anti-inflammatory phenotype following stroke but later transition to a pro-inflammatory state. The mechanisms underlying this phenotypic shift remain unclear. This study investigates the activation dynamics of molecular signaling pathways in macrophages and microglia after stroke.

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Early neuroinflammatory injury plays a crucial role in initiating and progressing multiple sclerosis (MS). Neutrophils are forerunners to neural lesions in MS, yet the temporal alterations of their functions in MS remains unclear. This study demonstrated a positive correlation between circulatory neutrophil counts and disease activity and severity in treatment-naïve MS patients.

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Gut microbiome plays a pivotal role in combating diseases and facilitating healthy aging, and natural products derived from biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) of the human microbiome exhibit significant biological activities. However, the natural products of the gut microbiome in long-lived populations remain poorly understood. Here, we integrated six cohorts of long-lived populations, encompassing a total of 1029 fecal metagenomic samples, and employed the metagenomic single sample assembled BGCs (MSSA-BGCs) analysis pipeline to investigate the natural products and their associated species.

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General modeling strategies for sporadic cerebral small blood vessel diseases (CSVDs) include limiting blood stream in large blood vessels and inducing systemic hypertension, in which small blood vessel deficit is either a secondary or concomitant pathology. In the current study, we introduce that intra-cisterna-magna Bevacizumab injection (ICM-BI) directly causes cerebral small blood vessel injury by neutralizing VEGF-A, the indispensable growth factor for angiogenesis. ICM-BI reproduces neuro-functional impairment, tight junction loss, cerebral micro-bleeds (CMBs), amyloid peptide accumulation, neuronal injury, white matter loss, and glial cell activation, which are common manifestations of sporadic CSVDs.

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Background: Enterobacterial translocation is a leading contributor to fatal infection among patients with acute ischaemic stroke (AIS). Accumulative evidence suggests that mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) effectively ameliorates stroke outcomes. Whether MSC could inhibit post-stroke enterobacterial translocation remains elusive.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Chronic stress has been found to worsen CAA by increasing the buildup of amyloid protein beta (Aβ) in brain blood vessels and contributing to further brain damage.
  • * Neutrophils and their formation of extracellular traps (NETs), influenced by chronic stress and norepinephrine, play a significant role in CAA development, suggesting that targeting stress-related factors and NETs could offer new treatment possibilities.
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Article Synopsis
  • The BAD-study was a comprehensive analysis of branch atheromatous disease (BAD)-related strokes in 476 patients across 20 hospitals in China, focusing on demographic, clinical, and therapeutic aspects.
  • The study found that the majority of participants were middle-aged and male, with a higher occurrence of strokes linked to the lenticulostriate artery; 86.5% of patients had good outcomes by 90 days, despite 14.7% experiencing early neurological deterioration.
  • Key predictors of poor outcomes included higher stroke severity at admission and early deterioration, while extracranial artery stenosis was associated with better outcomes.
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Background: The comorbidities of ischemic stroke (IS) are increasing worldwide. This study aimed to quantitatively assess the effect of different types of comorbidity on readmission and hospitalization expenditures of patients with IS.

Methods: A retrospective observational study was conducted from the basic insurance claims database of a large city in China, between January 1, 2018, and May 31, 2022.

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Arteriosclerotic cerebral small vessel disease (aCSVD) is a major cause of stroke and dementia. Although its underlying pathogenesis remains poorly understood, both inflammaging and gut microbiota dysbiosis have been hypothesized to play significant roles. This study investigated the role of gut microbiota in the pathogenesis of aCSVD through a comparative analysis of the gut microbiome and metabolome between CSVD patients and healthy controls.

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Background: Little is known about the association between serum neuron-specific enolase (NSE) concentration and anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) encephalitis. This study aims to investigate if serum NSE concentration is related to the clinical features of anti-NMDAR encephalitis.

Methods: Serum NSE levels were detected in 58 anti-NMDAR encephalitis cases, 58 matched healthy controls and 58 matched disease controls.

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Gut microbiota of centenarians has garnered significant attention in recent years, with most studies concentrating on the analysis of microbial composition. However, there is still limited knowledge regarding the consistent signatures of specific species and their biological functions, as well as the potential causal relationship between gut microbiota and longevity. To address this, we performed the fecal metagenomic analysis of eight longevous populations at the species and functional level, and employed the Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to infer the causal associations between microbial taxa and longevity-related traits.

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Aims: Hypoperfusion induces significant white matter injury in cerebral vascular disorders, including arteriosclerotic cerebral small vessel disease (aCSVD), which is prevalent among the elderly. Iron transport by blood vessel endothelial cells (BVECs) from the periphery supports oligodendrocyte maturation and white matter repair. This study aims to elucidate the association between iron homeostasis changes and white matter injury severity, and explore the crosstalk between BVECs and oligodendroglial lineage cells.

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White matter injury contributes to neurological disorders after acute ischemic stroke (AIS). The repair of white matter injury is dependent on the re-myelination by oligodendrocytes. Both melatonin and serotonin antagonist have been proved to protect against post-stroke white matter injury.

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Adaptive metabolic responses and innate metabolites hold promising therapeutic potential for stroke, while targeted interventions require a thorough understanding of underlying mechanisms. Adiposity is a noted modifiable metabolic risk factor for stroke, and recent research suggests that it benefits neurological rehabilitation. During the early phase of experimental stroke, the lipidomic results showed that fat depots underwent pronounced lipolysis and released fatty acids (FAs) that feed into consequent hepatic FA oxidation and ketogenesis.

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Background And Objectives: Sleep disorders are a common and important clinical feature in patients with autoimmune encephalitis (AE); however, they are poorly understood. We aimed to evaluate whether cardiopulmonary coupling (CPC), an electrocardiogram-based portable sleep monitoring technology, can be used to assess sleep disorders in patients with AE.

Methods: Patients fulfilling the diagnostic criteria of AE were age- and sex-matched with recruited healthy control subjects.

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We determined the genetic association between specific human leucocyte antigen (HLA) loci and autoimmune glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) astrocytopathy. Our results showed that autoimmune GFAP astrocytopathy was associated with HLA-A*3303 (odds ratio [OR] = 2.02, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.

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Background: There is an age-dependent change in the clinical phenotype of Myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody-associated disease (MOGAD). However, the clinical features of late-onset MOGAD have not been well described.

Methods: Clinical data of 110 MOGAD patients, including 21 late-onset patients with onset age greater than or equal to 50 years old were retrospectively analyzed.

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Article Synopsis
  • * 364 patients were included, with 336 used to develop the model and 28 for testing; the DL model showed promising results, detecting CMBs with a Dice score of 0.627 and classifying CSVD with an accuracy of 0.819.
  • * The model performed better than neurologists in classifying CSVD, indicating its potential as a useful tool in clinical settings for assessing risks associated with brain health.
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Background: Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) is a cerebral small vessel disease that carries mutations in NOTCH3. The clinical manifestations are influenced by genetic and environmental factors that may include gut microbiome.

Results: We investigated the fecal metagenome, fecal metabolome, serum metabolome, neurotransmitters, and cytokines in a cohort of 24 CADASIL patients with 28 healthy household controls.

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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia and is a serious social and medical problem threatening human health. The present study investigated the effect and underlying action mechanism of triptolide (Tri) on AD progression. Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR and western blotting analysis were used to determine the changes in RNA expression and levels of NF-κB signaling pathway proteins before and after lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induction.

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Cognitive impairment has been associated with an age-related decline in adult hippocampal neurogenesis (AHN). The molecular basis of declining neurogenesis in the aging hippocampus remains to be elucidated. Here, we show that pleiotrophin (PTN) expression is decreased with aging in neural stem and progenitor cells (NSPCs).

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Background: Anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) encephalitis is a severe autoimmune neuropsychiatric disease. Brain access of anti-NMDAR autoantibody through the blood-brain barrier (BBB) is essential for pathogenesis. Most previous animal models limit the investigation of etiologies of BBB damage in patients.

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Accumulation of amyloid beta protein (Aβ) in brain vessels damages blood brain barrier (BBB) integrity in cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). Macrophage lineage cells scavenge Aβ and produce disease-modifying mediators. Herein, we report that Aβ40-induced macrophage-derived migrasomes are sticky to blood vessels in skin biopsy samples from CAA patients and brain tissue from CAA mouse models (Tg-SwDI/B and 5xFAD mice).

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the relationship between serum homocysteine levels and idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH) in patients with deep perforating arteriopathy (DPA), as the causes of iNPH are not fully understood.
  • Results indicated that patients with iNPH had significantly higher homocysteine levels compared to those without iNPH, suggesting a potential connection between elevated homocysteine and the condition.
  • Further research is necessary to explore the predictive value of homocysteine, and to clarify the mechanism behind its association with iNPH in patients with DPA.
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